Historian Matthew Wright, writing in the Dom Post today, reminds us that it’s 30 years since the Springbok tour.
I agree with Wright’s premise that the protests against the tour were about much more than apartheid and rugby. They were an eruption of frustration and resentment against years of suffocatingly authoritarian, conservative government. The Springbok tour and the polarising figure of Robert Muldoon provided a convenient touch-paper.
However I question Wright’s conclusion that anti-tour protests had little impact on the white South African government or apartheid. He writes that “the white minority government wasn’t listening to international pressure”, but in fact the evidence suggests the republic’s burning desire to play rugby against New Zealand was a critical factor in bringing about political reform. Chris Laidlaw, who was New Zealand’s first diplomatic representative in black Africa, told me in 1994: “Rugby played a far bigger part in the transition to democracy [in South Africa] than most people realise.”
The African National Congress recognised that white South Africa’s rugby fervour was a pressure point that could be exploited to the ANC’s advantage. Laidlaw hosted secret meetings in Harare between ANC officials and South African rugby bosses Louis Luyt and Danie Craven, at which the message was clear: no more international rugby until apartheid was abolished.
“Once he [Luyt] got that into his head there was no stopping him,” Laidlaw told me. “He went straight to the South African government and said: ‘Things are going to have to change.’” So Wright may be slightly off the mark when he writes that New Zealanders bashing each other in Molesworth St weren’t going to change anything.
And it’s unfortunate that his piece is marred by a couple of minor factual errors. I observed the so-called Battle of Molesworth Street at close range and I don’t recall the police Red Squad being there, as Wright says. The Red Squad’s job was to protect the Springboks and match venues. What’s more, they weren’t commanded by Ross Meurant, as Wright implies, although that was a common misconception that Meurant may have been happy to go along with. The Red Squad was actually led by Phil Keber.
Oh, and I don’t recall seeing any PR-24 police batons (the so-called Minto bars that Wright refers to) at Molesworth St either. The batons used that night, as is clear from Evening Post photographer Ian Mackley’s black-and-white picture accompanying Wright’s piece, were standard, old-fashioned truncheons.
Footnote: As Wright remarks, the bloody clash between police and protesters in Molesworth St coincided with the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. This presented The Dominion with a dilemma: which story should take precedence? In the end, the Dom went with the royal wedding on the top half of the front page and the Battle of Molesworth Street below the fold.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Saturday, July 9, 2011
The changing TV landscape (sorry, media ecology)
(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, July 6.)
“Appointment viewing” is the fashionable television industry term for programmes that people can’t bear to miss.
Readers of a certain age will remember when the entire nation stayed home to watch shows like The Forsyte Saga or Upstairs, Downstairs. It was even said that borough councils changed their meeting nights to avoid missing an episode of The Avengers in its “Mrs Peel, we’re needed” heyday.
Back then, television was still something of a novelty and we had only one channel, meaning everyone watched the same shows and talked about them the next day. In an unexpected way, television served as a national unifier. It was as if we all shared one big living room.
So what programmes, if any, deserve to be described as “appointment viewing” these days? For reasons that elude me, Dancing with the Stars and the ghastly Master Chef New Zealand attracted huge audiences.
More recently, a certain type of viewer has been captivated by Downton Abbey on Prime. This costume drama was obviously intended to evoke fond memories of the golden age of British television, but you can almost see the keys protruding from the actors’ backs as they go through the motions as predictably as clockwork toys.
Friends of mine enjoyed it thinking it was a clever spoof, and were taken aback when they learned it was meant to be serious. (In fact Downton Abbey has itself been spoofed, wickedly and brilliantly, in a BBC production called Uptown Downstairs Abbey, viewable online at You Tube and starring such luminaries as Joanna Lumley, Jennifer Saunders and Kim Cattral.)
I can think of only three programmes that I make a point of watching, and as it happens, they're all local. One is Caravan of Life, which I stumbled on by chance a few weeks ago while waiting for the Saturday night news.
Caravan of Life is the sort of show New Zealand does very well. The presenter is journalist and former Good Morning host Haydn Jones, who trundles around the countryside in a 1960s Ford Falcon towing a vintage caravan. Yes, I know it sounds gimmicky - the sort of thing Te Radar might do. But the car and caravan are as far as the gimmickry goes.
Jones has a gift for seeking out ordinary New Zealanders - “characters”, in Kiwi parlance - who lead interesting lives. What’s more, he has the rare knack of being able to make them relax and reveal themselves on camera. His own style is engaging and whimsical without being forced or contrived.
It’s disappointing but hardly surprising that TVNZ, which relentlessly promotes appalling, exploitative British programmes about pathetic fat people, hasn’t done more to draw attention to this modest little gem.
My other appointment viewing is in the TV ghetto zone of Sunday morning, when I watch TV3’s The Nation and TV One’s Q&A back-to-back. Both are good but I’ve decided I prefer The Nation, hosted by Sean Plunket. It’s a no-nonsense, no-frills current affairs programme that typically includes a solid, thorough investigative segment on a current issue (last week it was asset sales; the week before that, farmer resistance to proposed environmental laws that over-ride property rights - both first-class reports by journalists I‘d never heard of.)
Q&A is flashier and more stagey, to the extent that I sometimes have the feeling that the format gets in the way of the content. But the interviews are searching and tough, and like The Nation, it offers us the opportunity to size up our public figures in a way that’s impossible from fleeting soundbites on the news.
It’s hard to imagine now, but programmes like these once screened in prime time. What’s more, people watched them. Current affairs interviewers - Brian Edwards, Simon Walker, Ian Fraser - were the aristocracy of New Zealand television. Gallery in its day was appointment viewing, though we didn’t call it that. Television took seriously its duty to inform as well as to entertain.
But the television landscape (or “media ecology”, as academics like to call it) has irrevocably changed. The multiplicity of channels now available means that no one broadcaster or programme can command the nation’s attention. The audience is fragmented and as channels proliferate, particularly on Sky, competition for premium programme content intensifies and acquisition costs escalate - all of which puts pressure on the free-to-air channels, which (unlike Sky) have no subscription income to cushion them.
The notion of the public service broadcaster survives in the form of Radio New Zealand, but otherwise it’s in peril. TVNZ is in the process of being released from its obligations under the public service charter introduced under Labour. Its sole objective in future will be to return a dividend to the government (not that viewers will notice much difference, since the charter was largely ineffectual).
Programmes like Q&A and The Nation are made only because they’re funded by the taxpayer through New Zealand On Air. And they are at the mercy of TVNZ programmers, who show what they think of serious current affairs by consigning them to a Sunday morning timeslot when only the truly committed will watch. Now that really is appointment viewing.
Yet the champions of public broadcasting haven’t entirely given up hope. They point out that although nearly 50 percent of New Zealand households now subscribe to Sky, on a typical weeknight 78 percent of eyeballs still watch the free-to-air channels. This suggests New Zealanders remain wedded to traditional mainstream TV even when Sky offers them a choice of 110 channels.
In any given week it’s likely that seven or more of the 10 most popular programmes will have been on TV One. In the week June 26-July 2, for instance, the four top-rating shows were Country Calendar, One News, Fair Go and The Food Truck - all on TV One. Only Shortland Street, on TV2, cracked TV One’s stranglehold on the top 5.
What’s more, six of the top 10 programmes were New Zealand-made. TVNZ chief executive Rick Ellis acknowledges that “New Zealanders love their local content”.
Figures like this give heart to a small group of academics, broadcasters and television producers who are fighting a rearguard action to protect what’s left of public television in New Zealand. But the outlook is bleak and neither the political nor the commercial environment are encouraging.
“Appointment viewing” is the fashionable television industry term for programmes that people can’t bear to miss.
Readers of a certain age will remember when the entire nation stayed home to watch shows like The Forsyte Saga or Upstairs, Downstairs. It was even said that borough councils changed their meeting nights to avoid missing an episode of The Avengers in its “Mrs Peel, we’re needed” heyday.
Back then, television was still something of a novelty and we had only one channel, meaning everyone watched the same shows and talked about them the next day. In an unexpected way, television served as a national unifier. It was as if we all shared one big living room.
So what programmes, if any, deserve to be described as “appointment viewing” these days? For reasons that elude me, Dancing with the Stars and the ghastly Master Chef New Zealand attracted huge audiences.
More recently, a certain type of viewer has been captivated by Downton Abbey on Prime. This costume drama was obviously intended to evoke fond memories of the golden age of British television, but you can almost see the keys protruding from the actors’ backs as they go through the motions as predictably as clockwork toys.
Friends of mine enjoyed it thinking it was a clever spoof, and were taken aback when they learned it was meant to be serious. (In fact Downton Abbey has itself been spoofed, wickedly and brilliantly, in a BBC production called Uptown Downstairs Abbey, viewable online at You Tube and starring such luminaries as Joanna Lumley, Jennifer Saunders and Kim Cattral.)
I can think of only three programmes that I make a point of watching, and as it happens, they're all local. One is Caravan of Life, which I stumbled on by chance a few weeks ago while waiting for the Saturday night news.
Caravan of Life is the sort of show New Zealand does very well. The presenter is journalist and former Good Morning host Haydn Jones, who trundles around the countryside in a 1960s Ford Falcon towing a vintage caravan. Yes, I know it sounds gimmicky - the sort of thing Te Radar might do. But the car and caravan are as far as the gimmickry goes.
Jones has a gift for seeking out ordinary New Zealanders - “characters”, in Kiwi parlance - who lead interesting lives. What’s more, he has the rare knack of being able to make them relax and reveal themselves on camera. His own style is engaging and whimsical without being forced or contrived.
It’s disappointing but hardly surprising that TVNZ, which relentlessly promotes appalling, exploitative British programmes about pathetic fat people, hasn’t done more to draw attention to this modest little gem.
My other appointment viewing is in the TV ghetto zone of Sunday morning, when I watch TV3’s The Nation and TV One’s Q&A back-to-back. Both are good but I’ve decided I prefer The Nation, hosted by Sean Plunket. It’s a no-nonsense, no-frills current affairs programme that typically includes a solid, thorough investigative segment on a current issue (last week it was asset sales; the week before that, farmer resistance to proposed environmental laws that over-ride property rights - both first-class reports by journalists I‘d never heard of.)
Q&A is flashier and more stagey, to the extent that I sometimes have the feeling that the format gets in the way of the content. But the interviews are searching and tough, and like The Nation, it offers us the opportunity to size up our public figures in a way that’s impossible from fleeting soundbites on the news.
It’s hard to imagine now, but programmes like these once screened in prime time. What’s more, people watched them. Current affairs interviewers - Brian Edwards, Simon Walker, Ian Fraser - were the aristocracy of New Zealand television. Gallery in its day was appointment viewing, though we didn’t call it that. Television took seriously its duty to inform as well as to entertain.
But the television landscape (or “media ecology”, as academics like to call it) has irrevocably changed. The multiplicity of channels now available means that no one broadcaster or programme can command the nation’s attention. The audience is fragmented and as channels proliferate, particularly on Sky, competition for premium programme content intensifies and acquisition costs escalate - all of which puts pressure on the free-to-air channels, which (unlike Sky) have no subscription income to cushion them.
The notion of the public service broadcaster survives in the form of Radio New Zealand, but otherwise it’s in peril. TVNZ is in the process of being released from its obligations under the public service charter introduced under Labour. Its sole objective in future will be to return a dividend to the government (not that viewers will notice much difference, since the charter was largely ineffectual).
Programmes like Q&A and The Nation are made only because they’re funded by the taxpayer through New Zealand On Air. And they are at the mercy of TVNZ programmers, who show what they think of serious current affairs by consigning them to a Sunday morning timeslot when only the truly committed will watch. Now that really is appointment viewing.
Yet the champions of public broadcasting haven’t entirely given up hope. They point out that although nearly 50 percent of New Zealand households now subscribe to Sky, on a typical weeknight 78 percent of eyeballs still watch the free-to-air channels. This suggests New Zealanders remain wedded to traditional mainstream TV even when Sky offers them a choice of 110 channels.
In any given week it’s likely that seven or more of the 10 most popular programmes will have been on TV One. In the week June 26-July 2, for instance, the four top-rating shows were Country Calendar, One News, Fair Go and The Food Truck - all on TV One. Only Shortland Street, on TV2, cracked TV One’s stranglehold on the top 5.
What’s more, six of the top 10 programmes were New Zealand-made. TVNZ chief executive Rick Ellis acknowledges that “New Zealanders love their local content”.
Figures like this give heart to a small group of academics, broadcasters and television producers who are fighting a rearguard action to protect what’s left of public television in New Zealand. But the outlook is bleak and neither the political nor the commercial environment are encouraging.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Not a good week for free speech
(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, July 5).
New Zealand has been stricken by the most serious outbreak yet of the highly contagious condition I call acute sensitivity disorder.
Not all women were blinded by fury at what Alasdair Thompson said about menstruation affecting women's productivity. Some thought the outcry was grossly disproportionate to the supposed insult. But few people of either sex were prepared to stick up for Mr Thompson - not because they thought that what he said was indefensible, but because they were intimidated into silence by the howling of the lynch mob.
A high-profile Auckland businesswoman - a solo mother - told me she wanted to support Mr Thompson because she thought he had been unfairly pilloried, but she wouldn't take the risk of saying anything publicly.
That illustrates how easily free speech and public debate can be stifled when the vengeful mob takes over. This was Hitler's technique: to frighten opponents into submission with such an overwhelming show of force that no-one dared dissent. Mr Thompson was abandoned even by his spineless board of directors.
Worse still, elements of the media were complicit in this, stoking the flames of outrage and orchestrating the vilification of a man whose worst sin seems to be that he sometimes shoots his mouth off.
Many female journalists couldn't see past their own indignation. The professional obligation to report the issue fairly and dispassionately was discarded.
TV3 in particular savaged and mocked Mr Thompson, jettisoning all pretence of neutrality and abandoning the once-sacrosanct principle of separating reportage from opinion. Not a pretty sight.
I wonder how many of Mr Thompson's attackers - including a former prime minister who apparently suffers from the delusion that she's still the Queen Bee - took the trouble to watch the unedited version of his 28-minute interview with Mihingarangi Forbes from Campbell Live, in which he attempted to clarify his views on the disparity between men's and women's pay rates. (You needed to watch the whole thing online because TV3 broadcast only four minutes that showed Mr Thompson reacting to provocation by a reporter whose interest was solely in what he had said about women's periods.)
Nothing Mr Thompson said was belittling to women. He didn't say men were better workers (quite the contrary, in fact), and there was nothing to suggest that he thought the 12 per cent pay disparity between the sexes was a desirable state of affairs.
Much of what he said simply reflected the reality of the employment market: for example, that women are more likely than men to take time off when children are sick, and that many women's careers are interrupted by motherhood, with a consequent impact on their earning potential.
The worst he can be accused of is that he made a careless generalisation in the initial radio discussion and didn't have facts to support it. But he was howled down so deafeningly that public figures in future will think very carefully before expressing a view on anything, and good people who might otherwise be tempted to enter public life may decide it's just not worth the grief.
All of which is good for the control freaks who want to dictate what we think and say, but bad for democracy.
* * *
THE irony is that by the end of the week, much of the heat had been taken off Mr Thompson and the Employers & Manufacturers Association (Northern) by another ugly display of bullying that frightened two book chains into declaring they won't stock Ian Wishart's book about Macsyna King and her part in the death of the Kahui twins.
This edges us even closer to Nazism, which was ruthlessly efficient at discouraging people from reading things that those in power didn't like.
There is some frighteningly muddled thinking going on here. Boycotting Wishart's book won't bring back the Kahui twins, and it won't remove the stain left on the soul of the country by their deaths. Neither will a boycott prevent any more abused children from dying.
But if there's even a remote chance that the book will shed a chink of light on the circumstances that led the Kahui babies to die, and therefore help us understand how these things happen, then society stands to gain from its publication.
It has been said in defence of Paper Plus and The Warehouse that booksellers make decisions every week about what books to stock and what not to stock. True - but in this case the decision not to sell the book has been made for fear of a consumer backlash, which makes it an act of moral cowardice. It can't be because the two chains disapprove of the content, because no-one has seen it yet.
This raises the interesting question of whether booksellers, as disseminators of information in a liberal democracy, have special obligations to society that don't apply to other retailers.
All things considered, not a good week for freedom of speech.
New Zealand has been stricken by the most serious outbreak yet of the highly contagious condition I call acute sensitivity disorder.
Not all women were blinded by fury at what Alasdair Thompson said about menstruation affecting women's productivity. Some thought the outcry was grossly disproportionate to the supposed insult. But few people of either sex were prepared to stick up for Mr Thompson - not because they thought that what he said was indefensible, but because they were intimidated into silence by the howling of the lynch mob.
A high-profile Auckland businesswoman - a solo mother - told me she wanted to support Mr Thompson because she thought he had been unfairly pilloried, but she wouldn't take the risk of saying anything publicly.
That illustrates how easily free speech and public debate can be stifled when the vengeful mob takes over. This was Hitler's technique: to frighten opponents into submission with such an overwhelming show of force that no-one dared dissent. Mr Thompson was abandoned even by his spineless board of directors.
Worse still, elements of the media were complicit in this, stoking the flames of outrage and orchestrating the vilification of a man whose worst sin seems to be that he sometimes shoots his mouth off.
Many female journalists couldn't see past their own indignation. The professional obligation to report the issue fairly and dispassionately was discarded.
TV3 in particular savaged and mocked Mr Thompson, jettisoning all pretence of neutrality and abandoning the once-sacrosanct principle of separating reportage from opinion. Not a pretty sight.
I wonder how many of Mr Thompson's attackers - including a former prime minister who apparently suffers from the delusion that she's still the Queen Bee - took the trouble to watch the unedited version of his 28-minute interview with Mihingarangi Forbes from Campbell Live, in which he attempted to clarify his views on the disparity between men's and women's pay rates. (You needed to watch the whole thing online because TV3 broadcast only four minutes that showed Mr Thompson reacting to provocation by a reporter whose interest was solely in what he had said about women's periods.)
Nothing Mr Thompson said was belittling to women. He didn't say men were better workers (quite the contrary, in fact), and there was nothing to suggest that he thought the 12 per cent pay disparity between the sexes was a desirable state of affairs.
Much of what he said simply reflected the reality of the employment market: for example, that women are more likely than men to take time off when children are sick, and that many women's careers are interrupted by motherhood, with a consequent impact on their earning potential.
The worst he can be accused of is that he made a careless generalisation in the initial radio discussion and didn't have facts to support it. But he was howled down so deafeningly that public figures in future will think very carefully before expressing a view on anything, and good people who might otherwise be tempted to enter public life may decide it's just not worth the grief.
All of which is good for the control freaks who want to dictate what we think and say, but bad for democracy.
* * *
THE irony is that by the end of the week, much of the heat had been taken off Mr Thompson and the Employers & Manufacturers Association (Northern) by another ugly display of bullying that frightened two book chains into declaring they won't stock Ian Wishart's book about Macsyna King and her part in the death of the Kahui twins.
This edges us even closer to Nazism, which was ruthlessly efficient at discouraging people from reading things that those in power didn't like.
There is some frighteningly muddled thinking going on here. Boycotting Wishart's book won't bring back the Kahui twins, and it won't remove the stain left on the soul of the country by their deaths. Neither will a boycott prevent any more abused children from dying.
But if there's even a remote chance that the book will shed a chink of light on the circumstances that led the Kahui babies to die, and therefore help us understand how these things happen, then society stands to gain from its publication.
It has been said in defence of Paper Plus and The Warehouse that booksellers make decisions every week about what books to stock and what not to stock. True - but in this case the decision not to sell the book has been made for fear of a consumer backlash, which makes it an act of moral cowardice. It can't be because the two chains disapprove of the content, because no-one has seen it yet.
This raises the interesting question of whether booksellers, as disseminators of information in a liberal democracy, have special obligations to society that don't apply to other retailers.
All things considered, not a good week for freedom of speech.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
And now for something utterly inconsequential
It’s a bleak, grey Saturday morning and I’m feeling picky. There are innumerable things I could feel picky about, but I’ve chosen something utterly inconsequential.
Today’s Your Weekend magazine, which comes with my Dominion Post, contains a review of Ray Columbus’ autobiography in which the claim is made that She’s A Mod, the 1964 hit by Columbus and his backing band the Invaders, was the first New Zealand record to reach the top 100 in the United States. It’s not clear whether this claim is made in the book or whether the reviewer got it somewhere else, but it didn’t ring true with me, so I checked.
Joel Whitburn’s Top Pop Singles: 1955-2002 is the bible of the Billboard chart, listing every song that made the top 100 in the US during that period. It’s a treasure trove for tragic students of pop minutiae, among whom I count myself, and it makes no reference to Ray Columbus and the Invaders. In fact there are very few New Zealanders listed. Among those I’ve stumbled across in its 1000 pages are Auckland-born Gale Garnett, whose We’ll Sing in the Sunshine went to No 4 in 1964; John Rowles (Cheryl Moana Marie, No 64 in 1971); Split Enz (I Got You, No 53 in 1980); Dragon (Rain, No 88 in 1984); Crowded House (whose Don’t Dream It’s Over went all the way to No 2 in 1987, one of five Neil Finn songs that made the Billboard chart) and the late Pauly Fuemana’s OMC (How Bizarre, No 4 in 1997). Keith Urban has four entries too, but I’m not sure whether we can claim him. In fact I’m not even sure we can claim Crowded House, strictly speaking, but Whitburn generously describes them as a New Zealand band and that’s good enough for me.
Alas, however, no Ray Columbus and the Invaders. This is not to diminish that group’s considerable achievements: they went to No 1 in Australia and in so doing, cracked open the Australian market for countless other New Zealand outfits. But we must keep the record straight.
Today’s Your Weekend magazine, which comes with my Dominion Post, contains a review of Ray Columbus’ autobiography in which the claim is made that She’s A Mod, the 1964 hit by Columbus and his backing band the Invaders, was the first New Zealand record to reach the top 100 in the United States. It’s not clear whether this claim is made in the book or whether the reviewer got it somewhere else, but it didn’t ring true with me, so I checked.
Joel Whitburn’s Top Pop Singles: 1955-2002 is the bible of the Billboard chart, listing every song that made the top 100 in the US during that period. It’s a treasure trove for tragic students of pop minutiae, among whom I count myself, and it makes no reference to Ray Columbus and the Invaders. In fact there are very few New Zealanders listed. Among those I’ve stumbled across in its 1000 pages are Auckland-born Gale Garnett, whose We’ll Sing in the Sunshine went to No 4 in 1964; John Rowles (Cheryl Moana Marie, No 64 in 1971); Split Enz (I Got You, No 53 in 1980); Dragon (Rain, No 88 in 1984); Crowded House (whose Don’t Dream It’s Over went all the way to No 2 in 1987, one of five Neil Finn songs that made the Billboard chart) and the late Pauly Fuemana’s OMC (How Bizarre, No 4 in 1997). Keith Urban has four entries too, but I’m not sure whether we can claim him. In fact I’m not even sure we can claim Crowded House, strictly speaking, but Whitburn generously describes them as a New Zealand band and that’s good enough for me.
Alas, however, no Ray Columbus and the Invaders. This is not to diminish that group’s considerable achievements: they went to No 1 in Australia and in so doing, cracked open the Australian market for countless other New Zealand outfits. But we must keep the record straight.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
We now know a bit more about John Key - or at least I think we do
(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, June 22.)
I recently watched Sean Plunket interview prime minister John Key on TV3’s The Nation.
Plunket’s pre-interview spiel gave the impression we were finally going to learn what drives Key politically – a tantalising prospect, since this is a question that has lots of people scratching their heads.
In fact the interview succeeded only partially in telling us what the nation’s most powerful politician stands for.
That’s not to say Key wasn’t honest, or that the interview wasn’t revealing. But in some ways it only served to deepen the Key enigma, and to remind us how different he is from his predecessors.
We certainly learned a few things about who inspired Key, and what he cares about.
Clearly, the dominant influence in his life was his late mother. He learned from her that you get out of life what you put into it (my apologies if I make that sound like a line from Forrest Gump). Despite her straitened circumstances as a solo mother, bringing up her children in a state house after the death of her alcoholic husband, she took control of her life. She taught her son to look forward, not to look back, and not to feel sorry for himself.
She also encouraged him to be ambitious. She had “huge” expectations of him and firmly set him straight when, at 15, he wanted to leave school and train horses.
His mother also taught him to be frugal. He remembered her putting the tips she earned as a hotel night porter into a jar to pay for occasional treats. So when his high-flying colleagues in the foreign currency dealing rooms were blowing their money on champagne, long lunches and flash cars, Key and his wife Bronagh concentrated on paying off their mortgage.
He bluntly described his high-living former workmates as stupid for not realising their stratospheric incomes wouldn’t last forever.
How, then, did these early life experiences mould John Key the politician?
We learned that although his mother was a Labour supporter (in common with many of her era who were grateful for a state house), the young Key was an admirer of National prime minister Robert Muldoon. He thought Muldoon had a vision of what New Zealand needed to be.
I found this revealing because Muldoon, while leading a party that ostensibly championed private enterprise, didn’t hesitate to exert tight economic and social controls using the apparatus of the state. (Full marks to Key for his honesty, at least. The only other contemporary politician I can think of who might cite Muldoon as a role model is Winston Peters.)
Key also revealed himself as a fan of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, an authoritarian leader who used the power of the state to suppress dissent.
Plunket noted, as I did, that both the leaders cited approvingly by Key were political strong men with little patience for opposition, but we shouldn’t assume from this that Key has a hidden authoritarian streak. He has a boyish enthusiasm and comes across as open, affable and reasonable. I can’t think of any New Zealand prime minister in my lifetime who was harder to dislike.
He explained that he admired Lee Kuan Yew because his bold, aspirational policies had transformed what was once a poor, Third World country - although he acknowledged that the same approach, which placed economic progress ahead of human rights, wouldn’t necessarily work here.
Key’s respect for Muldoon and Lee Kuan Yew is significant because neither leader seemed to care about ideology. They were pragmatists who adopted whatever policies they thought would work, regardless of any philosophical inconsistency.
The same might be said of Key’s government, which in its first term has been virtually an ideology-free zone – much to the frustration of many people who voted for it, expecting a much stronger commitment to traditional centre-right values.
Key gave some clues to what he believes. He wants everyone to have equality of opportunity and he sees education as crucial; but he also thinks people are responsible for their own success or failure. “You can make a difference in your own life.”
He clearly has little time for trade unions but appears to care deeply about the number of people trapped on welfare. As he said, something has clearly gone wrong when 13 percent of the working-age population are on a benefit compared with two percent in the 1970s.
He believes in celebrating success, which is why his government reinstated the traditional honours list. A consistent theme in the interview was that people should be encouraged to aspire to greater things. “You make your own luck.”
What was lacking, however, was a clear picture of how these beliefs translate into policies. We learned quite a lot about John Key the man, but there remains a credibility gap between what he professes to be motivated by and what his government is actually doing. He says the right things but his party remains cautious to the point of timidity.
Plunket rightly questioned whether Key’s performance in government was consistent with his maiden speech in Parliament, in which he talked about the need for politicians to be bold and to ignore public opinion when necessary.
Perversely, one of the few times Key appeared to disregard public opinion was when his party supported left-wing MP Sue Bradford’s anti-smacking bill, much to the disgust of most National voters. He also antagonised his own party’s supporters by pushing through a senseless, quixotic emissions trading scheme and pandering to divisive Maori claims on the coastline.
There may of course be a master plan behind Key’s apparent reluctance to embrace radical change. Colin James, one of our most perceptive political commentators, says National’s strategy is to make changes each term which are not earth-shattering in themselves but which the electorate can broadly go along with.
“After two or three terms of this pragmatic incrementalism the piecemeal changes add to a significant total,” he wrote recently. We shall see.
I recently watched Sean Plunket interview prime minister John Key on TV3’s The Nation.
Plunket’s pre-interview spiel gave the impression we were finally going to learn what drives Key politically – a tantalising prospect, since this is a question that has lots of people scratching their heads.
In fact the interview succeeded only partially in telling us what the nation’s most powerful politician stands for.
That’s not to say Key wasn’t honest, or that the interview wasn’t revealing. But in some ways it only served to deepen the Key enigma, and to remind us how different he is from his predecessors.
We certainly learned a few things about who inspired Key, and what he cares about.
Clearly, the dominant influence in his life was his late mother. He learned from her that you get out of life what you put into it (my apologies if I make that sound like a line from Forrest Gump). Despite her straitened circumstances as a solo mother, bringing up her children in a state house after the death of her alcoholic husband, she took control of her life. She taught her son to look forward, not to look back, and not to feel sorry for himself.
She also encouraged him to be ambitious. She had “huge” expectations of him and firmly set him straight when, at 15, he wanted to leave school and train horses.
His mother also taught him to be frugal. He remembered her putting the tips she earned as a hotel night porter into a jar to pay for occasional treats. So when his high-flying colleagues in the foreign currency dealing rooms were blowing their money on champagne, long lunches and flash cars, Key and his wife Bronagh concentrated on paying off their mortgage.
He bluntly described his high-living former workmates as stupid for not realising their stratospheric incomes wouldn’t last forever.
How, then, did these early life experiences mould John Key the politician?
We learned that although his mother was a Labour supporter (in common with many of her era who were grateful for a state house), the young Key was an admirer of National prime minister Robert Muldoon. He thought Muldoon had a vision of what New Zealand needed to be.
I found this revealing because Muldoon, while leading a party that ostensibly championed private enterprise, didn’t hesitate to exert tight economic and social controls using the apparatus of the state. (Full marks to Key for his honesty, at least. The only other contemporary politician I can think of who might cite Muldoon as a role model is Winston Peters.)
Key also revealed himself as a fan of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, an authoritarian leader who used the power of the state to suppress dissent.
Plunket noted, as I did, that both the leaders cited approvingly by Key were political strong men with little patience for opposition, but we shouldn’t assume from this that Key has a hidden authoritarian streak. He has a boyish enthusiasm and comes across as open, affable and reasonable. I can’t think of any New Zealand prime minister in my lifetime who was harder to dislike.
He explained that he admired Lee Kuan Yew because his bold, aspirational policies had transformed what was once a poor, Third World country - although he acknowledged that the same approach, which placed economic progress ahead of human rights, wouldn’t necessarily work here.
Key’s respect for Muldoon and Lee Kuan Yew is significant because neither leader seemed to care about ideology. They were pragmatists who adopted whatever policies they thought would work, regardless of any philosophical inconsistency.
The same might be said of Key’s government, which in its first term has been virtually an ideology-free zone – much to the frustration of many people who voted for it, expecting a much stronger commitment to traditional centre-right values.
Key gave some clues to what he believes. He wants everyone to have equality of opportunity and he sees education as crucial; but he also thinks people are responsible for their own success or failure. “You can make a difference in your own life.”
He clearly has little time for trade unions but appears to care deeply about the number of people trapped on welfare. As he said, something has clearly gone wrong when 13 percent of the working-age population are on a benefit compared with two percent in the 1970s.
He believes in celebrating success, which is why his government reinstated the traditional honours list. A consistent theme in the interview was that people should be encouraged to aspire to greater things. “You make your own luck.”
What was lacking, however, was a clear picture of how these beliefs translate into policies. We learned quite a lot about John Key the man, but there remains a credibility gap between what he professes to be motivated by and what his government is actually doing. He says the right things but his party remains cautious to the point of timidity.
Plunket rightly questioned whether Key’s performance in government was consistent with his maiden speech in Parliament, in which he talked about the need for politicians to be bold and to ignore public opinion when necessary.
Perversely, one of the few times Key appeared to disregard public opinion was when his party supported left-wing MP Sue Bradford’s anti-smacking bill, much to the disgust of most National voters. He also antagonised his own party’s supporters by pushing through a senseless, quixotic emissions trading scheme and pandering to divisive Maori claims on the coastline.
There may of course be a master plan behind Key’s apparent reluctance to embrace radical change. Colin James, one of our most perceptive political commentators, says National’s strategy is to make changes each term which are not earth-shattering in themselves but which the electorate can broadly go along with.
“After two or three terms of this pragmatic incrementalism the piecemeal changes add to a significant total,” he wrote recently. We shall see.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Another reason to keep our heads down and our mouths shut
Once again we see how fragile free speech really is in this supposedly liberal democracy. The lesson from Alisdair Thompson’s crucifixion in the media this week couldn’t be clearer: express an opinion at your peril.
In the deafening barrage of righteous indignation that followed Thompson’s comment that some women take sick leave when they have their periods, everyone was too busy taking offence to take much notice of what he actually said or the context in which he mentioned it.
The reference to periods came in a radio interview prompted by Green MP Catherine Delahunty’s bill that would require employers to provide information about pay rates, therefore testing whether there is sex discrimination in the workplace. Thompson’s main concern was that this would burden business with more bureaucracy and compliance costs.
Toward the end of the interview, on Mike Hosking’s NewstalkZB breakfast show, Thompson asked rhetorically: “Who takes most sick leave? Women do.” Some had to look after children at home, he said; others had a “sick problem” once a month.
He went on to say it wasn’t their fault, and perhaps there were issues they needed to sort out with their partners.
Not that anything mattered after he mentioned menstruation. At that point rational debate ceased as elements of the media, abandoning all semblance of objectivity, lashed themselves into a shark-like feeding frenzy.
It seems to me that Thompson can be accused of two things. He expressed an opinion – clearly a very dangerous thing to do these days – and he appeared to base it on information from his own workplace, which may or may not be indicative of the wider situation.
Hardly hanging offences, you might think. Freedom of speech includes the right to get things wrong, if indeed Thompson was wrong (we don’t really know). Yet in the ensuing hysteria, the CEO of the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern) was pilloried as if he were Pol Pot, Hitler and Idi Amin collectively reincarnated
Thompson subsequently tried to salvage things in a 28-minute interview with Mihingarangi Forbes from TV3’s Campbell Live. Faint chance. Once television has decided it wants your bloodied head on a spike, you’re a goner.
Among other things, Thompson tried to clarify his position by saying that women take more sick leave than men (a point that appears to be confirmed by public service figures, though the difference isn’t huge). They take time off to look after kids. Some have period problems. Some take maternity leave and may not come back to work for several years.
He mentioned all this in an attempt to explain why women’s productivity, which is central to the setting of pay rates, may be lower than men’s – which in turn might explain why women on average get paid 12 percent less. For the life of me, I can’t see why any of these comments should be considered exceptionable. He was simply saying that women employees have to deal with issues that don’t confront men, and that this can interfere with their careers and therefore prevent them from reaching the same pay levels as men. That seems to me to be a simple statement of fact.
Crucially, Thompson didn’t say he approved of this state of affairs, or that it was the fault of women. On the contrary, he emphatically declared himself to be in favour of equal pay for equal productivity, equal opportunity and flexible workplaces. He believed pay should be based on productivity, not sex, and he added that he thought the total productivity of women, taking into account their home life as well as their paid work, was higher than that of most men. He agreed it was odd that there are so many female schoolteachers yet so few female principals (a point raised by Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly on the Hosking programme, though it wasn’t directly related to the issue under discussion). He even saw merit in the objective of Delahunty’s bill, if not its remedy. These don’t strike me as the views of a sexist dinosaur, to use the two terms of abuse repeatedly hurled at Thompson in recent days.
Just as crucially, Thompson acknowledged that there was a pay gap between women and men. The real issue, he said, was whether the Delahunty bill would fix it, and British experience with similar legislation suggested it wouldn’t.
This was an attempt to bring the discussion back to where it had started, but Thompson might as well have been speaking in Swahili for all the notice Forbes took. She seemed interested only in skewering him over his comment about periods. (That, and whining repeatedly about her heroic efforts as a working mother with three children. At times you got the impression the interview was all about her.)
I’ve seen some outrageous TV interviews but this was one of the worst. Most of the time Forbes gave the impression she either wasn’t listening, didn’t understand what Thompson was saying or wasn’t interested. Perhaps all three.
It reached a point of almost comical absurdity when Forbes suggested Thompson should resign “because you cannot represent half of the population”, adding: “You certainly don’t represent me very well.” Thompson’s response – that his job was actually to represent employers – seemed lost on his dim-witted, self-absorbed interrogator, as was just about everything else he said.
Media coverage of the Campbell Live interview made much of the fact that at one point, Thompson stood up, walked over to Forbes and confronted her in what could have been interpreted as a a menacing manner. Shown in isolation, this certainly looked bad. What wasn’t clear was that Thompson was acting out of sheer frustration after spending 25 minutes trying to explain himself to someone who clearly paid no attention to anything he said. Watch the unexpurgated interview (it’s available at TV3 on Demand) and you’ll see what I mean.
If anything, Thompson was admirably restrained. I would have slung Forbes and her crew out of the office long before that point.
But perhaps Forbes shouldn’t be held solely to blame for her disgraceful performance. She was, after all, taking her cue from most of her colleagues in the electronic media, who jettisoned all pretence of balance, fairness and neutrality. When there’s a choice between playing sexual politics and observing professional journalistic standards, we now know which will win.
We also know what a media gang-up looks like, and it’s not an edifying spectacle. Want to stamp out New Zealand's bullying culture? Perhaps we could start here.
Watching TV3's highly partisan news coverage of the issue last night, I got the distinct feeling they won't rest until they can brandish Thompson's scalp. Signing off at the end of her item, the reporter said: "It's fair to say this is not the end of the debate." Yeah, right; I'm sure TV3 will see to that. It's a shame that a network that does so many things right should allow its professional judgment to lapse so badly on occasions like this.
But then it’s hard to identify anyone who emerges from the furore with any credit. I wonder how many of the illustrious public figures who lined up to condemn Thompson took the trouble to listen to what he said, in its entirety. Bugger all, I'd guess. Too busy being outraged.
Shame too on the business leaders who ran for cover or stayed silent when Thompson was being hung out to dry. Will the EMA cave in and sack him in response to the vengeful cries for blood? It will be a black day for business and for freedom of speech if they do.
Helen Kelly shrewdly made the most of the situation, playing on the EMA’s embarrassment in an obvious attempt to secure political leverage. Her father Pat, a union firebrand who died in 2004 and whose anniversary fell on Friday while the row was at its height, would have approved.
For his part, Thompson handled the affair clumsily. His first mistake was to panic and make what looked like an insincere apology. He shouldn’t have to apologise for a genuinely held view. Perhaps some nervous nellie in the EMA got in his ear and urged him to back down, but it only made things worse. Apologising doesn’t deter attackers – on the contrary, it encourages them because it makes the apologiser look weak and indecisive.
His performance led comedian Raybon Kan – described on this occasion as a media commentator – to suggest on Campbell Live that the entire affair was an ad for media trainers. But no amount of media training could prepare anyone to deal with the sort of vicious onslaught Thompson faced.
In the end we are all losers, because every time someone is publicly savaged for having the temerity to speak his or her mind, the rest of us take note and make a mental resolution to button our lips in future for fear for incurring similar punishment. How gratifying that would be for the control freaks and tut-tutters who want to banish all opinions that don’t conform with their own. And how ruinous for democracy.
Saddest of all, the very institution that should be protecting freedom of speech, the media, is busily imperilling it.
In the deafening barrage of righteous indignation that followed Thompson’s comment that some women take sick leave when they have their periods, everyone was too busy taking offence to take much notice of what he actually said or the context in which he mentioned it.
The reference to periods came in a radio interview prompted by Green MP Catherine Delahunty’s bill that would require employers to provide information about pay rates, therefore testing whether there is sex discrimination in the workplace. Thompson’s main concern was that this would burden business with more bureaucracy and compliance costs.
Toward the end of the interview, on Mike Hosking’s NewstalkZB breakfast show, Thompson asked rhetorically: “Who takes most sick leave? Women do.” Some had to look after children at home, he said; others had a “sick problem” once a month.
He went on to say it wasn’t their fault, and perhaps there were issues they needed to sort out with their partners.
Not that anything mattered after he mentioned menstruation. At that point rational debate ceased as elements of the media, abandoning all semblance of objectivity, lashed themselves into a shark-like feeding frenzy.
It seems to me that Thompson can be accused of two things. He expressed an opinion – clearly a very dangerous thing to do these days – and he appeared to base it on information from his own workplace, which may or may not be indicative of the wider situation.
Hardly hanging offences, you might think. Freedom of speech includes the right to get things wrong, if indeed Thompson was wrong (we don’t really know). Yet in the ensuing hysteria, the CEO of the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern) was pilloried as if he were Pol Pot, Hitler and Idi Amin collectively reincarnated
Thompson subsequently tried to salvage things in a 28-minute interview with Mihingarangi Forbes from TV3’s Campbell Live. Faint chance. Once television has decided it wants your bloodied head on a spike, you’re a goner.
Among other things, Thompson tried to clarify his position by saying that women take more sick leave than men (a point that appears to be confirmed by public service figures, though the difference isn’t huge). They take time off to look after kids. Some have period problems. Some take maternity leave and may not come back to work for several years.
He mentioned all this in an attempt to explain why women’s productivity, which is central to the setting of pay rates, may be lower than men’s – which in turn might explain why women on average get paid 12 percent less. For the life of me, I can’t see why any of these comments should be considered exceptionable. He was simply saying that women employees have to deal with issues that don’t confront men, and that this can interfere with their careers and therefore prevent them from reaching the same pay levels as men. That seems to me to be a simple statement of fact.
Crucially, Thompson didn’t say he approved of this state of affairs, or that it was the fault of women. On the contrary, he emphatically declared himself to be in favour of equal pay for equal productivity, equal opportunity and flexible workplaces. He believed pay should be based on productivity, not sex, and he added that he thought the total productivity of women, taking into account their home life as well as their paid work, was higher than that of most men. He agreed it was odd that there are so many female schoolteachers yet so few female principals (a point raised by Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly on the Hosking programme, though it wasn’t directly related to the issue under discussion). He even saw merit in the objective of Delahunty’s bill, if not its remedy. These don’t strike me as the views of a sexist dinosaur, to use the two terms of abuse repeatedly hurled at Thompson in recent days.
Just as crucially, Thompson acknowledged that there was a pay gap between women and men. The real issue, he said, was whether the Delahunty bill would fix it, and British experience with similar legislation suggested it wouldn’t.
This was an attempt to bring the discussion back to where it had started, but Thompson might as well have been speaking in Swahili for all the notice Forbes took. She seemed interested only in skewering him over his comment about periods. (That, and whining repeatedly about her heroic efforts as a working mother with three children. At times you got the impression the interview was all about her.)
I’ve seen some outrageous TV interviews but this was one of the worst. Most of the time Forbes gave the impression she either wasn’t listening, didn’t understand what Thompson was saying or wasn’t interested. Perhaps all three.
It reached a point of almost comical absurdity when Forbes suggested Thompson should resign “because you cannot represent half of the population”, adding: “You certainly don’t represent me very well.” Thompson’s response – that his job was actually to represent employers – seemed lost on his dim-witted, self-absorbed interrogator, as was just about everything else he said.
Media coverage of the Campbell Live interview made much of the fact that at one point, Thompson stood up, walked over to Forbes and confronted her in what could have been interpreted as a a menacing manner. Shown in isolation, this certainly looked bad. What wasn’t clear was that Thompson was acting out of sheer frustration after spending 25 minutes trying to explain himself to someone who clearly paid no attention to anything he said. Watch the unexpurgated interview (it’s available at TV3 on Demand) and you’ll see what I mean.
If anything, Thompson was admirably restrained. I would have slung Forbes and her crew out of the office long before that point.
But perhaps Forbes shouldn’t be held solely to blame for her disgraceful performance. She was, after all, taking her cue from most of her colleagues in the electronic media, who jettisoned all pretence of balance, fairness and neutrality. When there’s a choice between playing sexual politics and observing professional journalistic standards, we now know which will win.
We also know what a media gang-up looks like, and it’s not an edifying spectacle. Want to stamp out New Zealand's bullying culture? Perhaps we could start here.
Watching TV3's highly partisan news coverage of the issue last night, I got the distinct feeling they won't rest until they can brandish Thompson's scalp. Signing off at the end of her item, the reporter said: "It's fair to say this is not the end of the debate." Yeah, right; I'm sure TV3 will see to that. It's a shame that a network that does so many things right should allow its professional judgment to lapse so badly on occasions like this.
But then it’s hard to identify anyone who emerges from the furore with any credit. I wonder how many of the illustrious public figures who lined up to condemn Thompson took the trouble to listen to what he said, in its entirety. Bugger all, I'd guess. Too busy being outraged.
Shame too on the business leaders who ran for cover or stayed silent when Thompson was being hung out to dry. Will the EMA cave in and sack him in response to the vengeful cries for blood? It will be a black day for business and for freedom of speech if they do.
Helen Kelly shrewdly made the most of the situation, playing on the EMA’s embarrassment in an obvious attempt to secure political leverage. Her father Pat, a union firebrand who died in 2004 and whose anniversary fell on Friday while the row was at its height, would have approved.
For his part, Thompson handled the affair clumsily. His first mistake was to panic and make what looked like an insincere apology. He shouldn’t have to apologise for a genuinely held view. Perhaps some nervous nellie in the EMA got in his ear and urged him to back down, but it only made things worse. Apologising doesn’t deter attackers – on the contrary, it encourages them because it makes the apologiser look weak and indecisive.
His performance led comedian Raybon Kan – described on this occasion as a media commentator – to suggest on Campbell Live that the entire affair was an ad for media trainers. But no amount of media training could prepare anyone to deal with the sort of vicious onslaught Thompson faced.
In the end we are all losers, because every time someone is publicly savaged for having the temerity to speak his or her mind, the rest of us take note and make a mental resolution to button our lips in future for fear for incurring similar punishment. How gratifying that would be for the control freaks and tut-tutters who want to banish all opinions that don’t conform with their own. And how ruinous for democracy.
Saddest of all, the very institution that should be protecting freedom of speech, the media, is busily imperilling it.
Friday, June 24, 2011
In defence of duFresneism
Several people have responded to my recent post about the academic takeover of journalism training, including a couple of the individuals mentioned. Herewith, in no particular order, are my responses:
1. Martin Hirst of AUT, writing under his cutely enigmatic nom-de-blog Ethical Martini, asks when I was last in a journalism school or spoke to a journalism tutor. In fact it’s several years since I was last in a journalism school (it was Wintec). I can visit a journalism school only if I’m invited, and oddly enough my post box isn’t jammed with pleas from journalism tutors for me to come and speak to the students. I suspect the reason is that they don’t want their students to hear what I might have to say; it might conflict with their theoretical models.
Hirst says I have a standing invitation to visit the AUT journalism school. I don’t recall any such invitation, and in any case a “standing invitation” is pretty much like saying “we must catch up over coffee some time” without intending ever to act on it. Besides, I’m in Masterton and AUT is in Auckland, and I don’t have a taxpayer-funded travel budget.
I certainly wouldn’t expect an invitation anytime soon from one prominent journalism school whose head, a former student told me, was in the habit of badmouthing me in front of his students. (The aforementioned head of school, it almost goes without saying, is a man with no mainstream journalism experience.)
However I have had some dealings with tutors. I attended the Jeanz (Journalism Education Association of NZ) conference in 2007 and would happily go again if given the opportunity. I don’t have a closed mind. I also have occasional social contact with some former journalists who have become tutors. In general they are people I respect.
2. Martin Hirst also claims that as part of my “long list of errors”, I wrote that Sean Phelan teaches journalism. Wrong. It worries me – and it should certainly alarm Hirst's students – that a man who is proud to use the honorific “Dr” has such poor comprehension skills that he didn’t see my very explicit acknowledgment that Phelan teaches media studies. But since Hirst raises the issue, it’s worth noting that the Massey website includes Phelan in the profiles of its journalism staff. That suggests to me that his role includes getting inside the heads of journalism students with his thoughts on “post-Marxist discourse”, whatever that may be. Hirst urges me to check the facts. It seems he could do with a good fact-checker himself.
3. Bomber Bradbury, according to Hirst, has plenty of mongrel in him. I certainly wouldn’t dispute that. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if Bomber Bradbury howls at the moon. Listening to Bradbury’s splenetic outpourings on Jim Mora’s Panel, I often imagine there’s a nice man in a white coat waiting outside the studio door to lead him (Bradbury that is, not Jim) gently back to the secure ward. But when I lament the lack of “mongrel” in academically trained journalists, I’m not suggesting – and I suspect Hirst knows this – that simply being a noisy non-conformist and exhibitionist is qualification enough for being a good journalist. You’ve got to have proven journalistic skills too, and to my knowledge Bradbury has none. He’s a polemicist and political activist who has no place as a “role model” in a journalism school paid by the state to turn out graduates for an industry he appears to despise and hold in contempt.
4. Samantha Ives challenges me to visit her journalism school (Whitireia, obviously) and praises her no-nonsense tutor Jim Tucker. Fair enough. Jim and I have had our disagreements but I respect him as someone who has “done the business” (he’s a former editor of the Auckland Star), and I’d be surprised if his teaching was contaminated by leftist ideology or flawed theoretical models.
5. I thank Sean Phelan for doing me the honour of naming something (du Fresneism) after me. If he’s so stung by my criticism that he feels impelled to write long (and I daresay impenetrable) articles in rebuttal, I’ll take it as a compliment.
6. Finally, I’d suggest that my academic critics have it all arse-about-face. They seem to be calling on me to justify myself, but I’m just a lone voice in the blogosphere wilderness. I don’t have my hand in the taxpayer’s pocket and I’m happy to stand on my journalistic record, which is far from flawless but is out in the open for anyone to see. My attackers are the people who need to be held accountable. They’re the ones who are paid by the hapless taxpayer to teach the next generation of journalists, and who use this publicly funded sinecure to promote a highly politicised model of journalism that is at odds with, and hostile to, the one followed by the industry that employs their graduates. It’s they who should be justifying themselves, not me.
1. Martin Hirst of AUT, writing under his cutely enigmatic nom-de-blog Ethical Martini, asks when I was last in a journalism school or spoke to a journalism tutor. In fact it’s several years since I was last in a journalism school (it was Wintec). I can visit a journalism school only if I’m invited, and oddly enough my post box isn’t jammed with pleas from journalism tutors for me to come and speak to the students. I suspect the reason is that they don’t want their students to hear what I might have to say; it might conflict with their theoretical models.
Hirst says I have a standing invitation to visit the AUT journalism school. I don’t recall any such invitation, and in any case a “standing invitation” is pretty much like saying “we must catch up over coffee some time” without intending ever to act on it. Besides, I’m in Masterton and AUT is in Auckland, and I don’t have a taxpayer-funded travel budget.
I certainly wouldn’t expect an invitation anytime soon from one prominent journalism school whose head, a former student told me, was in the habit of badmouthing me in front of his students. (The aforementioned head of school, it almost goes without saying, is a man with no mainstream journalism experience.)
However I have had some dealings with tutors. I attended the Jeanz (Journalism Education Association of NZ) conference in 2007 and would happily go again if given the opportunity. I don’t have a closed mind. I also have occasional social contact with some former journalists who have become tutors. In general they are people I respect.
2. Martin Hirst also claims that as part of my “long list of errors”, I wrote that Sean Phelan teaches journalism. Wrong. It worries me – and it should certainly alarm Hirst's students – that a man who is proud to use the honorific “Dr” has such poor comprehension skills that he didn’t see my very explicit acknowledgment that Phelan teaches media studies. But since Hirst raises the issue, it’s worth noting that the Massey website includes Phelan in the profiles of its journalism staff. That suggests to me that his role includes getting inside the heads of journalism students with his thoughts on “post-Marxist discourse”, whatever that may be. Hirst urges me to check the facts. It seems he could do with a good fact-checker himself.
3. Bomber Bradbury, according to Hirst, has plenty of mongrel in him. I certainly wouldn’t dispute that. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if Bomber Bradbury howls at the moon. Listening to Bradbury’s splenetic outpourings on Jim Mora’s Panel, I often imagine there’s a nice man in a white coat waiting outside the studio door to lead him (Bradbury that is, not Jim) gently back to the secure ward. But when I lament the lack of “mongrel” in academically trained journalists, I’m not suggesting – and I suspect Hirst knows this – that simply being a noisy non-conformist and exhibitionist is qualification enough for being a good journalist. You’ve got to have proven journalistic skills too, and to my knowledge Bradbury has none. He’s a polemicist and political activist who has no place as a “role model” in a journalism school paid by the state to turn out graduates for an industry he appears to despise and hold in contempt.
4. Samantha Ives challenges me to visit her journalism school (Whitireia, obviously) and praises her no-nonsense tutor Jim Tucker. Fair enough. Jim and I have had our disagreements but I respect him as someone who has “done the business” (he’s a former editor of the Auckland Star), and I’d be surprised if his teaching was contaminated by leftist ideology or flawed theoretical models.
5. I thank Sean Phelan for doing me the honour of naming something (du Fresneism) after me. If he’s so stung by my criticism that he feels impelled to write long (and I daresay impenetrable) articles in rebuttal, I’ll take it as a compliment.
6. Finally, I’d suggest that my academic critics have it all arse-about-face. They seem to be calling on me to justify myself, but I’m just a lone voice in the blogosphere wilderness. I don’t have my hand in the taxpayer’s pocket and I’m happy to stand on my journalistic record, which is far from flawless but is out in the open for anyone to see. My attackers are the people who need to be held accountable. They’re the ones who are paid by the hapless taxpayer to teach the next generation of journalists, and who use this publicly funded sinecure to promote a highly politicised model of journalism that is at odds with, and hostile to, the one followed by the industry that employs their graduates. It’s they who should be justifying themselves, not me.
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